Skip to main content
Main

Macedoine of Vegetables

A boiled vegetable mixture of asparagus, onions, cauliflower, turnips, carrots, potatoes, and beans, served with béchamel sauce, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cauliflower and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 286 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Macedoine of Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Boil the asparagus tops, button onions, cauliflower, turnips, carrots, new potatoes, and French beans until tender.

Combine and serve

  1. In a stewpan, combine the boiled vegetables with the béchamel sauce, salt, and pepper.

  2. Heat the mixture until very hot and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cauliflower + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Asparagus + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Asparagus + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together292 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Asparagus + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Béchamel sauce
Coats the vegetables in a creamy, binding sauce that adds moisture and richness.
New potatoes
Add starchy body and a soft, tender texture to the mixture.
Asparagus tops
Contribute tender texture and a distinct green vegetable flavour.
French beans
Add tender-crisp texture and fresh, green flavour.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour along with a firm, tender bite.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until very hot. Béchamel is a starch-thickened sauce that can scorch on the base of a pan and turn lumpy or floury if overheated or left unstirred. Heating the mixture gently while stirring keeps it smooth and evenly hot throughout.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, cauliflower, turnip, carrot, potato, beans, sauce):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, cauliflower, turnip, carrot, potato, beans, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesAsparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes